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The tragedy of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting reached many of us in a very profound way. What could be more tragic than a deranged gunman slaughtering innocent children? It strikes a chord in all of us.

In the weeks since the incident there has been much speculation online about the events of that day, particularly the seeming lack of genuine emotion on the part of those interviewed about the shooting. Perhaps most notably, the medical examiner appears to be a macabre figure who offers odd answers to the questions he is asked, and seems to guffaw and chuckle at bizarre times while giving cryptic responses about how good photographers can make anything look real. One might chalk this behaviour up to as a strange man in a morbid profession and think no more about it. Further examples of the alleged actors used to portray mourning parents and others are widely available online, and many videos explore these possibilities. Certainly there has been a recent push by Obama to reform gun legislation. Allegations suggest that such an incident is quite useful in moulding public opinion in favour of such reforms.

Watching videos on Youtube is a dangerous thing. What are their sources? Where do they get their information?
One of the websites mentioned in several of the videos is CrisisActors.org. Here is what they provide in their own words: “Visionbox Crisis Actors are trained in criminal and victim behavior, and bring intense realism to simulated mass casualty incidents in public places.” While the website has posted a firmly worded rebuttal of the recent allegations of their involvement in the Sandy Hook Shooting, it does beg the question why anyone would want to hire crisis actors to enact a large scale crisis like the large shopping mall catastrophe, as they describe on their homepage. If one would like more information they are encouraged to click on a Visionbox link which will take the viewer to an acting guild website offering information about classes one can enrol in, productions and much more.

Whether due to recent traffic on the site or not, all pages for CrisisActors require email verification to view.
One video suggested that CrisisActors was owned by a larger corporation called Vision-Box. Spelling isn’t communicated through audio, so when I Googled “Vision Box” the site at the top of the search was not about actors at all, but rather about a company whose business was providing personal identification systems (biometrics). The company’s mission is to “Be the market leader in the design, development, manufacturing and commercialization of computer vision, biometric and electronic security systems.” This refers to the identification of people based on fingerprints, facial imaging, retinal scans and other such information. Vision-box offers a kiosk for this purpose.

Is there a connection between the necessity of creating and portraying realistic crisis scenarios and selling equipment designed to track people and ‘secure’ areas? Perhaps they are opposite sides of the same coin: fear. One is used to create fear, while the other is used to assure people against the possibility of that fear.